THE INDEPENDENT: If fear had a smell, the westerly breezes would be bearing a rank odour from the other side of the Atlantic: it would be emanating from the pores of the Democratic Party establishment as it contemplates the dwindling of Barack Obama's previously impressive opinion poll lead over John McCain.
This really was not meant to happen. The intensity and discipline of Obama's campaigning has been unremitting, while that on behalf of McCain has seemed incoherent, not helped by the 71-year old Arizona Senator's occasional senior moment. So how on earth could Gallup last week have found that those it claims to be "likely voters" are currently 49 per cent in favour of McCain and only 45 per cent for Obama?
Some in the Obama camp complain that it has come as the McCain campaign has switched to "negative advertising". This seems to be largely based on a Republican ad called "The One", which splices images of Obama with Charlton Heston as Moses parting the Red Sea. Actually, since Obama had declared of his victory in the Democratic primaries that "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal", he was almost asking to be satirised.
You might think that the Democrats would be grateful to their opponents for comparing Barack Obama with a Biblical miracle-worker but, of course, they understood the unspoken sub-text – that Obama is man of unbelievable pretentiousness. The implicit contrast is with John McCain, the down-to-earth guy who tells it like it is in plain language – "the straight-talk express".
There is also a painful awareness in the Democrat camp that their candidate does not always help himself to appear more representative of "ordinary Americans". They still shudder over his unguarded comments to wealthy San Franciscan party donors about the industrial working classes who bitterly "cling to guns or religion", or his remarking in Iowa, apropos of rising food prices: "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and seen what they charge for arugula?" Can Obama Hope to Win If He Lacks the Common Touch? >>> By Dominic Lawson | August 12, 2008
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